We’ve been very lucky so far. Libby made if 9 months before she got sick for the first time. The bad news is her first one was a real doozy. We ended up in the emergency room last Sunday after her fever spiked to 103.5. Anything over 103 makes me pretty nervous, plus her breathing sounded labored. We called the “Ask a Nurse” hot-line and they advised that we go in.
When we got there they told me that we weren’t using the correct Tylenol dosage for her weight. They give a double dose to anyone with a fever over 102 (call your doctor, please) so the first thing we did was try to give her more baby Tylenol. She immediately barfed this back up on me and her (fun) and of course I didn’t take the time to pack her extra clothes. Thank God grandma decided to meet us there so she made the trip to Target to buy some clean PJ’s.
The tests they needed to run included drawing blood, getting some snot for cultures using a bulb syringe, and a chest x-ray. This was not fun for anyone. Getting the chest x-ray was the worst part. They have to strap the baby in to a scary looking harness so they are sitting up and you have to hold their hands above their heads. Plus they didn’t get enough blood the first time so they had to come back for more, doing a heel stick.
They decided that Libby had pneumonia starting in her right lung, and she was prescribed antibiotics twice a day and a nebulizer four times a day. My initial idea for this post was going to get ideas on how to get kids to take medicine. You can’t really reason or negotiate with a 9 month old. But a miracle happened. Libby went from spitting the medicine out and fighting us to taking it and smiling. We found the trick to be cheering for her.
Before
After
We started by holding her down and one person would force her lips open and try to get her swallow. But all she needed was someone to cheer her through it. What you don’t see in the after photo below is my mom in the background dancing me saying “Yeah Libby! Go Libby!” Libby would swallow the nasty stuff and look up and smile, like “look at how good I did!”
Next step, nebulizer…it is hard to get a baby to sit still long enough to get all the medicine during a nebulizer treatment, but I think she did pretty well.
What worked for us was cartoons (shocker) and a new toy.
We would only get out the new pinwheel to play with when she was getting a treatment so it always seemed new. This seemed to work pretty well.
Nebulizer treatments
Libby is doing much better now and her cough is nearly gone. I hope you are all having a happy, healthy winter!
Wow, did that bring back memories for me! Jack was sick sooo much at that age, and I remember how scary that was. (I believe we had three ER trips within the first year and a half.) It sounds like you guys did great! Nebs and meds are no fun, so way to go for figuring out ways to make it work!